The Left’s Quest for Texas

In 1960, Nixon beat Kennedy in California following up on Eisenhower’s decisive wins over Adlai Stevenson. Nixon won California again in 1968, beating out Humphrey, and then McGovern in 1972. Ford held on to California in 1976, Reagan won it decisively in two elections and Bush held on to it against Dukakis.

All that ended in 1992. No Republican has won California since.

With the largest number of electoral votes in the country, California played a decisive role in Republican presidential victories. Texas, with the second largest number of electoral votes, a state which leaned Democrat around the same time that California learned Republican, has become the ace in the hole. And if the Democrats can turn Texas blue, then it may be a long time until we see a Republican in the White House.

Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to win Texas and he was the Democrat who lost Texas. But today’s Democrats are hoping that Hillary Clinton can win Texas back.

On paper Texas does not seem very shaky. Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts moderate, pulled in better numbers than McCain and nearly matched George W. Bush’s numbers in 2000. Romney performed even better than Ronald Reagan did when he first took Texas in 1980. That alone is a sign of how red Texas has gotten in the last thirty years.

So why worry? Demographics are one reason. Texas is approaching the same demographic tipping point as California. Even with Republican 4/10 Latino vote scores, the Texas future is inevitably tilting in a Democratic direction even without the proposed illegal alien amnesty. The demographic tipping point won’t arrive in 2016, but the voter registration and community organizing tipping point might.

Battleground Texas is the new Democratic strategy for doing to the Lone Star State what General Santa Anna tried to do in his time. Their strategy depends on heavy doses of voter registration and community organizing. The two are largely interconnected in urban areas where the Democratic Party’s political machine links together social services, community groups and bloc votes.

In 2012, that machine took a great leap forward by merging community organizer tactics with dot com data mining operations and corporate email lists for a technocratic community organizing machine. With both sides crediting voter turnout and smart data for the win, the Democratic Party is feeling bold enough to head on into Texas.

Battleground Texas may be bravado, a feint to put the Republican Party on the defensive and get it to commit valuable resources to fighting for its formerly safe territories, but it may also be the real deal as a Democratic Party convinced that it can name its own price and do anything with a bunch of emails and a lot of PACs sets the stage for the next Alamo.

Jeremy Bird, Obama’s national campaign field director, who scored big with voter registration in western swing states like Colorado and Nevada, is hoping to help Battleground Texas do the same thing. But Battleground Texas’s actual executive director is Jenn Brown, an Obama campaign veteran, without much local experience, and while its digital director, Christina Gomez, does have that experience, its digital footprint is underwhelming, from its sloppy website to its chummy insider Twitter accounts.

Battleground Texas is mainly talking about itself and its plans for making Texas blue. That may feed the dreams of its New York and California donors, but there’s little there to appeal to non-partisan Texans. Battleground Texas has the usual spin about racial underrepresentation and voting rights indicating that its only real strategy is the race card. And while the race card has yet to wear out, expecting it to tilt Texas over in time for 2016 may be unrealistic.

While Bird promises that he can turn Texas into another Virginia, Texas is a very different place than Virginia. Battleground Texas smacks of an elitist national attempt to bypass the Texas Democratic Party with a lot of college students and not a whole lot of knowledge of the battleground territory. Unlike the old Obama organization which did its dirty work without constantly boasting about it, Battleground Texas has a borrowed ten-gallon hat full of bravado and not a whole lot of cattle, people or anything else to show for it.

Is Battleground Texas overreaching with its plans to spend tens of millions of dollars for a long shot plan to shift Texas? Tellingly Bird is counting on California and New York donors to buy into his plan to turn Texas blue. Texas doesn’t have a shortage of rich Democrats willing to plow money into the party. One of them is financing the Giffords gun control PAC. And yet Bird seems to think that not enough Texas donors will be willing to help Battleground Texas cover its grandiose budget. And that may be because even Texas liberals know that a grand project for the state this decade will be wasted money and effort.

Romney won Texas by 1.2 million votes. Those are formidable numbers and countering them will take big budgets and armies of volunteers that will have to go well outside their Austin comfort zones. Obama picked up Austin’s Travis County, Dallas County, Houston’s Harris County and El Paso County. Voter registration could no doubt find new voters there or duplicate voters, as the Dem machine has a way of doing, but it’s not as if the machine hasn’t already done a pretty thorough job of finding Dem voters in Houston, Austin and Dallas.

While the Democratic Party may be betting that forcing the GOP to fight for Texas will divert their resources, an extensive Democratic engagement with Texas may divert theirs even more. Battleground Texas offers a big dream to lure bicoastal billionaires into splurging money that Democrats could use to win actual battleground states.

A Democratic struggle for Texas backed by big money and bigger ambitions may be another case of fighting a land war in Asia or more aptly, the Blitzkrieg into Russia, with some initially deceptive successes leading to wasted resources and national defeat.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

patron

I have a strong feeling Democratic turnout will bust when they can no longer yell “First Black President” and clean out the ghetto, often with voters casting six different ballots.

Chezwick

The "first black president" will be followed by an appeal for the "first woman President"….and so it will be. Hillary will run, she'll be nominated….and unless the Republicans present the country with a formidable alternative, she'll be elected.

As for Texas, it is a mirror of the rest of the country. Twenty years ago, the Southwest was being over-run by Mexican immigrants. Today, farm towns in Iowa, fishing villages in North Carolina, parts of the country that NEVER had an Hispanic presence….are populated by increasing numbers of Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal.

The writing is on the wall, folks….the whites are aging, the minorities are young. Immigration continues unabated. We WILL have an Hispanic majority by 2060. But take heart folks. After all, we could be in Europe's shoes, where MUSLIMS will constitute a majority around the same year. At least Hispanics for the most part share our culture. I just hope the English language survives.

http://www.adinakutnicki.com AdinaK

Here's the thing, the Dems will do whatever it takes to steal Texas, by hook or by crook. However, the convergence of gun control may very well make this state an Alamo moment, if many Texans have their way. In other words, if the Demsters grab guns, and Texans react as they are likely to, this will be a turning point, and not what the Dems are hoping for – http://adinakutnicki.com/2013/02/02/americans-the…

The above is more than in play, depending on what comes first – gun control or barreling into Texas before it takes place.In any case, for the most part, Texans are a far cry from Californians and the rest of the left coast states.

"Texas, with the second largest number of electoral votes, a state which leaned Democrat around the same time that California learned Republican"
There's a mistake in that part of the post.

Texas won't be blue for a long time, Romney did a lot better that Mccain in the last elections, and not every Latino will vote Democrat, other than that Obama got 4 Million less votes (in the whole country) than in 2008.

harrylies

Why don't Republicans try to turn California or New York blue? Are they hopeless? Reagan won both States twice.

Softly Bob

Do you mean red?

mlcblog

Obviously must.

Asher

Because of all the illegal aliens and minorities that now vote for the Democrats!

pierce

Did any one watch the Romney interview on Fox yesterday. He was the hand picked candidate by the PAC.
The PAC had other choices, but they just had to have Romney. He was not my choice, but I voted for him, because he was better than Obama, or so I thought, but Romney never fought with gloves on, or off. Forgave Chris Christie for being buddy buddy with Obama after Hurricane Sandy.
Texas should stay red, and it has got a red hot new Senator in Cruz. The Dems will really have to work hard if they want to take Texas, the home state to 2 ex President Bush's.
But don't count out Obama, there is a NY Democrat trying to do away with the Amendment that prevents a 3rd term. All Hail Obama, whoops that was all hail Caesar, oh well Obama thinks he is Caesar.
Texas, don't become another California, or for that matter New York, and the rest of the northeast.

Fritz

I've brought this up before, repealing the presidential term limit requires a constitutional amendment, over 500 amendments have been proposed since 1776, only a fraction of that made any headway , and not even 30 were ever ratified. It takes two thirds of state legislatures to ratify an amendment and both houses of congress. The dummy for N.Y can propose whatever he likes, but with at least 1/2 the states controlled by Republicans, and one house of congress controlled by Republicans, this assumes that every Democrat would be on board with repealing the term limit, and not all are exactly thrilled with the idea of Barry running for a third term, some on principle, and there are others who would like a chance to sit in the oval office as well, Andrew Coumo being one of them.

mlcblog

Nothing as lowly as Caesar. Only Christ will do! The messiah.

WilliamJamesWard

With the Barak Benghazi Obama dream team of destroyers it is possible Texas will be all
that looks like America in the next four years if thier budget holds, think of all of the displaced
Americans jumping the fence to get into Mexico for a job…………Obama wants to return
slavery to America by way of Communism, class hate and thuggery…………….William

BarbG

A lot of the unemployed are jumping the fence going to Canada and getting good paying jobs. One Canadian employer said that he likes hiring English speaking Americans because our culture is the same. So much for going to Mexico.

AnOrdinaryMan

At least Texas will fight voter fraud; and there are enough military bases and Republicans and Independents to make a difference, at least for a while.

Alan

I hope Jeremy Bird’s plane crashes on the way to Texas.
And…if that isn’t “nice”…tough. Screw him, and screw Obama for destroying our country.

Asher

The Left can't stand it that Texas is a Red State that opposes tyranny…or that people love living there where there is alot of Freedom. We must stop these evil people and kick them in the pants!

mlcblog

Sometimes I think of moving to Texas just because of their freedom-loving stance!!

tagalog

Certainly Texas has big blue areas like Austin, Houston, and Dallas. It's not a pipe dream that Texas may one day be a blue state. It could happen. One step in the right direction would be to curb illegal immigration into Texas.

NTS

Exactly.
1. Adopt Arizona's "hire an illegal lose your professional license" law. It helped drive Mexican illegals from that state-not to mention immediately reduce the rape and child molestation rates (Oops, should not have mentioned that).
2. Then take it a step further. Make any person who, having been previously caught employing illegals and who again hires an illegal who then commits a crime, the hiring person shall be a principal to the crime committed. Make the consequences personal for those hiring illegals and the demand for illegals will collapse.

rbla

Whites are barely half of Texas' population now. By 2020 according to FAIR projections Non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics will both be equal at about 41% of the population. So while the GOP may hold onto Texas in 2016 that will end shortly afterward due to the demographic changes inflicted on us by the elite and that includes the cheap labor Texas crowd – the Bushes, Rove, Perry etc.

Loyal Achates

I suppose appealing to non-white people is out of the question. Everyone knows morality and intelligence are inversely proportional to melanin production.

scum

Don't worry, the Republicans are the masters of illegal re-disricting, making the picture look white. Ha!!

pagegl

Yeah, and around here in Texas they learned how to do from the Democrats. Thank you LBJ.

NTS

Aw, butt-sore that the GOPers, after 150 years or so, finally figured out a dem tactic? Boo hoo.

Lindsey

Why destroy the state with the most job creation?

QA_NJ

“Why destroy the state with the most job creation?”

Why do locusts eat a field bare so there is nothing left to eat? It’s simply what they do. And you’ll notice that Democrats and liberals act just like locusts. They destroyed New York, Massachusetts, and California and then moved to places like New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Oregon. Now that they’ve messed up those places, they are moving South into Virginia, the Carolinas, Georia, Florida, Idaho, and Texas. And when they foul those places with Democrat officials that they elect, they’ll move on to some other lower-tax and pro-business state and mess that up, too. It’s what they do.

If they understood cause and effect, they wouldn’t be leftists or Democrats and they might notice the obvious trends produced by the policies they champion, not only in the United States and within the various state governments but also in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. Japan has been waiting for a recovery for more than 2 decades now following the same sort of policies that Democrats favor in the United States and their debt is currently 200% of their GDP and still rising and they still don’t have a recovery. That’s our future.

antisharia

Don't underestimate the corruption and brutality of the Democratic party. If they can't win it, they'll just take it. As the Mexican vote grows, the Republican vote shrinks. Texas won't go to the Democrats in 2016, but give it 16-20 years and it might. The left is good at planning for the long game we're not. We probably thought that California would vote GOP forever too.

john

If texas acceptscompanies like google,yahoo and apple know to be pro liberal then your fight s already over for you see money now days almost allways wins out over ethics and moralality.

Judy Reinhardt

One can hope.

Ar'nun

It has little to do with how much money the Dems spend in Texas, it is just a matter of sending their operatives there to train the Dems of Texas to voter early and often. You will see in the next major election in Texas, like in Florida in 2012, that you will magically have more votes tallied than there are registered voters. This is the trend in every formerly red state the Dems have targetted. But ID's are racist.

EarlyBird

When IDs are not needed, and are demanded of non-white only, yes they are racist.

SCREW SOCIALISM

The US needs VOTER ID.

It's not a surprise that FAKE SOCIALIST "democrats" are AGAINST VOTER ID.

VOTER ID benefits all parties, EXCEPT those who have committed VOTER FRAUD.

TexRanger

There is a strong probability that Democrats will take over Texas. Dallas County, Texas was once solidly conservative. Now, it has leftist District Attorney, County Judge, and Sheriff. Houston is even worse. Why? Easy to answer that one. George Bush, Clinton and the first Bush opened the border doors wide open to the illegal Mexicans who have flooded the state and now make up about 40% of the population. Here in Irving, Texas, 77% of the public school children are Mexican and the Mexicans are the majority Irving. And, Austin, Texas is reported to be one of the very most left-wing city in America. Take a look at House Speaker Strauss. He's nothing but a Democrat hiding out in Republican clothes. Next, is Rick Perry, the governor. Rick Perry still brags about slamming though legislation that allows illegal aliens living in Texas to attend Texas colleges at low in-state-tuition rates while charging U. S. citizens who come here to go to college the astronomically high out-of-state tuition fees. Of course, Rick Perry was a Democrat when first elected to the Texas House of Representatives. America is witnessing the reason why all democracies have a very limited lifetime of 250-300 years. They rot from within as we see America doing today. It won't be but a few years until the spelling of Texas has to be changed to Mexas!

NAHALKIDES

It boils down to one thing: immigration. If the Democrats can import a sufficient number of third-world immigrants into Texas, people who don't share the American Dream of freedom, then yes of course they can turn Texas blue, and the rest of the country too. That has been their plan since at least 1965. That is why California is now out of reach. It's been obvious, and yet important Republicans like G.W. Bush, John McCain, and Marco Rubio can't see it – or don't want to.

mekus milkdud

the united states is a lost cause they keep moving as many mexicians and blacks into every city and state they can and then let them breed like rats and welfare hoes take over and then the cities and states turn into war zones not fit to live in

fanlad

The beach head for the liberals are in the cities, where the entittlement populace reside. This along with the republicans morphing into an every expanding tent, where abortion, gay rights, and ungodly values become the norm, spells a major shift in the voting pattern for Texas. This is where the two party system becomes one. It's just a matter of time.
That is, unless we the people wake up first.

EarlyBird

So why do the Dems need to spend money on campaigns when all they need to do is refer the average America voter, of any color to Front Page Magazine as an example of where the Republicans have become: Here are some higlights:

"Mexicans and blacks…breeding like rats".

"I have a strong feeling Democratic turnout will bust when they can no longer yell "First Black President" and clean out the ghetto, often with voters casting six different ballots."

" Obama wants to return slavery to America by way of Communism, class hate and thuggery."

"I suppose appealing to non-white people is out of the question. Everyone knows morality and intelligence are inversely proportional to melanin production."

Why, the GOP is just welcoming, mature, reasonable Big Tent!

Loyal Achates

Earlybird! I'm surprised at you – I was being sarcastic just then.

Thought with this lot it's hard to tell the difference.

Black and latino people are horrible and disgusting and ruining America! WHY WON'T THEY VOTE FOR US???

You also have to get in the face of the so-called "journalists" such as Chris Matthews and call them FRAUDS to their face. They need to be ridiculed openly with no apology. We are WAY BEYOND Mr Nice Guy with these people. Time to lay it out firmly: use terms like LIARS, CHEATS, BIASED, COMPROMISED, MAL-PRACTICE, AMATEURS, HACKS, WILLFULLY IGNORANT, PRETENDERS, etc.Call them for what they are! Provoke them into a REAL debate and stop being nice! They don't deserve it.

EarlyBird

By the way, I don't think Hilary is going to run for president again. The woman is exhausted and doesn't have the stamina for it any more.

lightning

Yeah, Hillary. The most polarizing, far left democrat(besides Obama, who can’t run again.) She has about as much chance of winning Texas as he did.

fiddler

Sounds like this is just throwing in the towel. So sloth, dependency, and entitlement are the irresistable outcomes of this nation? Can't we incourage more Blacks to be like Dr. Ben Carson, or. Larry Elder, or Walter E. Williams, or Allen West, or Alfonzo Rachel? Are we to just stand by an watch Texas cross over into the Dark Side (i.e. of the Force)? What are we doing for heaven's sake to turn New York Red? Is that an utter impossibility, or is this nation irretrievably "Sloutching Toward Gomorah"? Will there be no one who "gets it" when prosperity is nearly gone? Where are the second-thoughters?

Fritz

One thing that is in the way of the Crook County machine's grand design for Texas is voter ID laws, this was in large part responsible for Romney winning the sate by a majority of 1.2 million votes. Another is the Obama administration and the Democrats trying to tinker with the second amendment . In order for there to be a major political shift the economy in Texas also has to take a dive, if people are happy with the way things are voting patterns will not change. It's also hard to buy people off with government handouts when they can easily find private sector jobs that pay more. Community organizing only works to a point, as mentioned in this article the Dems are already winning the vote in urban areas where such "organizing" reaps the biggest results.
This has largely faded from memory but Texas used to be a Democrat controlled state up until the 1960s, California used to be a Republican state up until the same time.

Mutantone

Sounds so democratize already to me!
“If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land,” said Mustafa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth CAIR branch.
The rally in Austin was part of a nationwide effort to hold “Muslim Capitol Day” events."

TRI-GEM IT

Very nice article. I like It

Thanks

rayburke

The insanity continues. We are lost. Sage advice to conservatives: Practice prejudice, big time !!!

LibertyWriter

Texas must drive the socialists out of education. Our responsibility is to our children. If they grow up with propaganda we will lose more than elections.

cynthia curran

Whites in Texas vote over 70 percent for the REpublicans whle Hispanics are between 28 to 40 percent depending upon whose running. TExas will probably be purple though by 2024 when whites start dying off. Texas needs to get one million illegals out.

cynthia curran

Romeny got 57 percent in Texas and 53 percent in Orange County Ca. Texas is following the path of the OC and getting less republican as the years go by. Reagan got about 65 in Texas and 67 in Orange County Ca in 1980.

mlcblog

Would that this will be true! just what I have been praying for, that BT will fall flat on its face, unable to succeed, perceived by the savvy Texans as a foreign ruse to take over their state, but here I learn of a hopeful refusal of support by the very Dems and out of staters that BT seeks to enlist in its hopefully ill-fated campaign.

Dana Hansen

Democrats/Liberals left expensvie states such as new york and moved to states such as virginia –where they could afford bigger and better……….-Virginia gott infiltrated with liberals –this has changed the makeup of many states; and this could happen to Texas too, if too many liberals take up residence their –this has happened in many areas of the world also.
……….